Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[apl68]

We need more, not fewer, good musicians, and many come from unexpected (i.e., non-urban) backgrounds.

Is a college education in music really the pathway to additional good musicians?

Is renovating a performance center in the hopes of making revenue for the institution the best way to spend $3M to support aspiring musicians in the community?

I am reminded of the person who did her formal education in the creative side and was then surprised that her non-profit to support creatives failed: https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/12/from-graduate-student-to-amazon-warehouse-janitor.html .  Had the person spent her formal education in non-profit management with internships and done an MPA and taken workshops for her creative work, then she probably would have made a better go at realizing her stated dream of running a non-profit that supports artists.

Reading the article, I don't have a clue what the business model was, (i.e. where the money was supposed to come from), for her enterprise. ("Non-profit" is fine; "non-income" isn't.)

She appears to have chosen a field where very few people of any color or gender have an easy time making a go of it.  Either she was very poorly advised by her mentors, or she chose not to believe much of what they said. 

Well, she's young yet and still seems hopeful.  I wish her well in finding some way to make a fair living, and still getting to do what she likes to do on the side. 

[marshwiggle]

Reading the article, I don't have a clue what the business model was, (i.e. where the money was supposed to come from), for her enterprise. ("Non-profit" is fine; "non-income" isn't.)

She appears to have chosen a field where very few people of any color or gender have an easy time making a go of it.  Either she was very poorly advised by her mentors, or she chose not to believe much of what they said. 

Here's what she said:

I wanted to create a space where emerging visual and performing artists could receive professional development and education, network with local companies and potential clients, and expand their portfolios with themed exhibitions and performance opportunities.
I threw myself into a business plan, applied to art grants and startup-accelerator programs, and even joined an innovative female-owned co-working space, Splash Coworking. I created an artist-in-residence program, facilitating the artist-development initiative through a monthly event series I curated.

I see lots of things requiring money, (and given that the artists need the help precisely because they aren't financially stable, it's not going to come from them), but the only sources of money seem to be grants (including ones from accelerator programs, that are at best only for a short time), and those are never large.
Exhibitions, performances, and so on, in my experience, are basically always subsidized, so those wouldn't be money-makers for the organization, since it would have to provide the subsidies.

I don't see any potential income stream that would be generated by the "business".

Well, she's young yet and still seems hopeful.  I wish her well in finding some way to make a fair living, and still getting to do what she likes to do on the side.

Sadly, the odds don't look good.

When I left my full-time sales job at a call center last year, several months before graduating from my master's program, I felt invincible. I thought to myself, I'll just finish up my master's degree and start my own company doing what I love: writing and creating opportunities for other artists.

The fact that she was working full-time at a call centre while doing her master's should been some clue as to her employment prospects with the degree, but clearly it wasn't. (The only sort of degree which would make such a difference would be something professional, where the credential is needed to work in the field. In that case graduation could make a big jump in income.)

[arty_]

Is renovating a performance center in the hopes of making revenue for the institution the best way to spend $3M to support aspiring musicians in the community?

At my university, we build whatever the heck donors want. It is seemingly unrelated -- if not antithetical -- to what the faculty, administration, students, etc. want. The fundraising arm of the university says "yes!", doesn't ask questions, and doesn't push to massage the big gifts from what I can tell.

[mamselle]

Issue #1: Earmarked gifts are the bane of sane budgeting.

Issue #2: I can't take time to read the article right now. I just finished with one music student, I have to attend a dance class in 45 min. and haven't had dinner yet.

But...yes, my studies have definitely informed my work in music. Just now I was citing my freshman music theory teacher to a student who's learning his arpeggios and had one pop up in a song he's learning.

I've been analyzing a piece one of my students wants to play to see if we can find a chanted and/or folk dance source as clues to interpretive options.

I'm working between my earlier art, dance and music history studies to see if a Persian visual trope can help forecast the source of a Korean dance iconography exemplar (both show up in sources along the Silk Road at various times....) and/or had something to do with musical instruments pictured in the Korean piece.

Now, did I need all those studies to "play out" (be a musical performer doing G.B. work) as some would say?

Yes and no.

I was performing professionally by my last year in high school. I started teaching music and dance shortly after that.

Yes, people learn informally and by association; I definitely learned from the folks I played with, of course. But the educational side gave me options for practicing better, ways of looking up pieces and studying them and performing them that I might not have gotten from "the scene" itself.

Or maybe I would have. But what I would never say is that the education got in the way of the performing, or harmed my enjoyment of it.

The auto-didacts in music comes may not need schooling, true. But the rest of us do.

Music teachers can't get jobs in the public school systems without the credentials the programs usually lead to. Those curators in the archives I work in all have doctorates, in addition to their library degrees (and often their very impressive musical chops as well). I couldn't hold down my end of a conversation with another critic or write the pieces I've written without that background.

As easily have a lab bench manager calculate the titrations to program the robot for without a degree in chemistry.

Or something.

M.

[polly_mer]

As easily have a lab bench manager calculate the titrations to program the robot for without a degree in chemistry.

The lab manager doesn't do titrations; that's a completely different job...much like being a music teacher is a different job than being a professional musician or enjoying playing music publicly as a hobby while relying on some other profession to support the family.

Refusing to believe that people can perform at high levels while making money doing something else is how scientists end up performing in the state operas and orchestras while "professional" musicians take pitiful gigs and give painful private lessons to pay bills.

Formal instruction may be important for many people to grow as musicians, but few people need a college degree in music to have an adult life filled with music.

[TreadingLife]

More program prioritization, right-sizing, administrative review, whatever you want to call it, at St. Mary's College in Maryland, a Public Liberal Arts Honors College.

https://smnewsnet.com/archives/487165/st-marys-college-board-of-trustees-approves-academic-program-changes-for-fall-2021/?fbclid=IwAR25IubrphfRiNIONngz-rXOKIg-f1t0D8uqyzPFjFEbItuP9-q52nZ-dL4

[mamselle]

give painful private lessons to pay bills.

My private lessons are a joy and pay decently.

I will not let you take that away from me.

M.

[dr_codex]

Not about any specific college, but a guide for Physics departments facing closure: https://ep3guide.org/toolkit. Cited in a longer piece in Inside Higher Education in an article about the state of the field: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/02/10/physicists-discuss-threats-facing-departments-and-how-faculty-can-respond?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=65e1d17ccd-DNU_2021_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-65e1d17ccd-236510958&mc_cid=65e1d17ccd&mc_eid=adf482cc60

None of this is probably going to shock anybody who has read to this point in the thread.

[marshwiggle]

Not about any specific college, but a guide for Physics departments facing closure: https://ep3guide.org/toolkit. Cited in a longer piece in Inside Higher Education in an article about the state of the field: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/02/10/physicists-discuss-threats-facing-departments-and-how-faculty-can-respond?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=65e1d17ccd-DNU_2021_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-65e1d17ccd-236510958&mc_cid=65e1d17ccd&mc_eid=adf482cc60

None of this is probably going to shock anybody who has read to this point in the thread.

This is a great quote:

Hoddep said it's important for physics faculty to understand the perspectives of administrators who control an institution's purse strings.

"Some departments come and say, 'We're the physics department, we have to exist,' and those are the departments that are ultimately doomed," Hoddep said.

This applies to any discipline.

[apl68]

More program prioritization, right-sizing, administrative review, whatever you want to call it, at St. Mary's College in Maryland, a Public Liberal Arts Honors College.

https://smnewsnet.com/archives/487165/st-marys-college-board-of-trustees-approves-academic-program-changes-for-fall-2021/?fbclid=IwAR25IubrphfRiNIONngz-rXOKIg-f1t0D8uqyzPFjFEbItuP9-q52nZ-dL4

Neuroscience, Marine Science, Applied Data Science and Business Administration, and Track and Field are in.  German, Religious Studies and assorted performing arts majors and minors--the usual suspects--are out, along with some math and physics concentrations and Latin American Studies.  And what's left of the performing arts majors are being consolidated into a Performing Arts major.

Not the first time we've seen a Latin American Studies program cut in recent years.  I can remember when Latin American Studies was very much an up-and-coming field.  Guess it's not surprising to see some of the many majors set up during that time turning out to be also-rans.

[Ruralguy]

Going back to the Physics thing, that was a good article. I can add to it by saying:

1. Give students what they want (within reason). If they tend to be engineering oriented, don't offer only geophysics or  third semester theoretical quantum chromodynamics.  We re-oriented our whole program toward engineering (though due to the heavy college core, we couldn't get to the ABET certification level). They also have option of doing more traditional physics (which about half of them still do, probably because they see it as easier!).

2. Give students a slower paced avenue forward. That is, don't shove Calculus and Physics with Calcl in their faces in their first year. Only 25% of them can handle that. Think of ways to handle this at a slower pace. We did this by establishing an "Intro to Engineering" sort of course. For the less Engineering inclined, they can count one semester of a  Physics oriented subject (but no calc) at intro level, such as Astro, toward teh major.

3. Try your best to be relatable. It often means putting in more face time. For those who say "that isn't fair, the business folks don't need to do that"...well, "fair" is for people who don't care whether they lose their jobs or not or have any students at all.

4. Be a good college citizen. Agree to teach as much in core as you can. Have faculty serve on "important" and "busy" committees. Chair them.


I'm sure there is more.

By the way, more than 50% of this can probably be applied, in principle, to any dept. that needs to grow (or they die).

[marshwiggle]

2. Give students a slower paced avenue forward. That is, don't shove Calculus and Physics with Calcl in their faces in their first year. Only 25% of them can handle that.

I'm curious about this one. Of the 75% who can't handle that, what percentage are actually able to graduate in phyics? In my experience, the ones who are that weak at math in the beginning aren't likely to ever be solid enough to handle the intense math that is fundamental to basically every physics sub-discipline. (The number who would be behind completely because of a poor high school would be quite low.)

[Ruralguy]

In a year in which we have 10 majors graduating (combined engineering and vanilla physics), maybe would have started with a couple more who couldn't hack it *as declared majors*. We probably lose 2-5 people before the declaration point, or even any unofficial notice to a professor that they are interested. But the numbers were a bit higher before we started the newer program with a delay in taking Physics with calc (for all but the top 25% or so). 

Though honestly, we sometimes grow the major by getting some people late who decided they liked Physics after they took at as a pre-med. We don't necessarily know who isn't choosing us because it got too hard for them.

Look, none of those bottom guys are likely to go to grad school, at least not fresh out, but in the past, they've gone into the military and started working on something "physicsy" once they were established. Or, they worked for a utility company managing nuclear power.

[Parasaurolophus]

Not the greatest fit into this thread, but I don't think it deserves its own thread yet.

Good news for mahagonny! (bills to eliminate tenure are advancing through both chambers of the Iowa legislature)


I don't imagine that's great news for Iowa universities. (Not that Iowa is best known for its universities, but still.)

[marshwiggle]

Not the greatest fit into this thread, but I don't think it deserves its own thread yet.

Good news for mahagonny! (bills to eliminate tenure are advancing through both chambers of the Iowa legislature)


I don't imagine that's great news for Iowa universities. (Not that Iowa is best known for its universities, but still.)

If it passes, it will be interesting to see what happens over the next decade or so. Presumably, in disciplines where faculty can get high paying positions elsewhere, faculty salaries will have to go up. In disciplines where there isn't much work outside academia, things could get ugly where firing becomes an easy option.